Yi National Criminal Law Criminal Customary Law Study

As a native ethnic group with a long history, Yi has a rich culture, in which, its criminal customary law plays a very important part, and also an important part of the Chinese law system. The origination and development of Yi criminal customary law have undergone a long process from primitive to modern. This paper makes a case study of the cases in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Region in Sichuan, and through a thorough analysis, attempts to study the relationship between Yi criminal customary law and the national criminal law.After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the laws of various ethnic groups in China were brought into the law system of the nation. However, the implementation of the national laws in the Yi regions has not brought a perfect effect because the Yi criminal customary law embedded in the thousands-year-old Yi culture remains a strong influence in the Yi people, who still count on it to deal with problems in their life.There exist obvious conflicts between Yi criminal customary law and national criminal law in terms of crime and non-crime, types of crime, and conviction. This paper, adopting a methodology of empirical study, contrastive study, historical study, and case study, studies the reasons, presentation, and results of the conflicts from the perspective of political, economical and cultural reasons, reaching a conclusion that the Yi criminal customary law plays an active role in the life of Yi people.A value judgment is made based on the systematic induction of the Yi criminal customary law, which is believed to be complimentary to the current national criminal law. The Yi criminal customary law places much priority on the material compensation to the victims and their family and the material punishment of the perpetrator, so that the victims could be relieved of their practical problems, and crimes be curbed. In addition, the mediation of the legal person Degu in the Yi society is compatible with the judiciary concept of restoration, which could solve the conflicts in time, and restore personal relationship and the harmony of the Yi community. This paper proposes to view the value of Yi criminal customary law from the levels of both theory and practice, taking it as a cultural phenomenon to study its relationship with national criminal law with an objective eye, and to fully cultivate the roles of mediation and problem-solving Degu has played in the Yi criminal customary law, so as to integrate the Yi criminal customary law into the national law system and serve the harmony and stability of the Yi regions.